Detecting mobile or tablet device

Question

The aim for me is to have a mobile website (for mobiles and tablets) and a responsive desktop website, built on Wordpress. I want the easiest way to implement fool proof dev

Answer 1

That code will work just fine for almost any device that is touch enabled.

Answer 2

For Mobile Detection on PHP I have always used the $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] variable. I use the function below to have very granular control over who gets delivered the mobile site (specific devices I want to support). Simply add useragents to the array (such as 'Ipad') to add additional devices.

function detectmobile(){
    $agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
    $useragents = array (
        "iPhone",
        "iPod",
        "Android",
        "blackberry9500",
        "blackberry9530",
        "blackberry9520",
        "blackberry9550",
        "blackberry9800",
        "webOS"
        );
        $result = false;
    foreach ( $useragents as $useragent ) {
    if (preg_match("/".$useragent."/i",$agent)){
            $result = true;
        }
    }
return $result;
}
if (detectmobile() == true) { wp_redirect('http://pageyouwwanttoredirectto'); }

Usage: you can the above code to your wordpress theme's functions.php file.

Answer 3

You can use the mdetect (Mobile detect) library to do this for you. It is written in several languages, and will detect Windows, Android, iOS etc. Make sure you read the documentation.

• PHP Version
• JavaScript Version

Take note that the JavaScript version contains this warning:

// WARNING: 
//   These JavaScript-based device detection features may ONLY work 
//   for the newest generation of smartphones, such as the iPhone, 
//   Android and Palm WebOS devices.
//   These device detection features may NOT work for older smartphones 
//   which had poor support for JavaScript, including 
//   older BlackBerry, PalmOS, and Windows Mobile devices. 
//   Additionally, because JavaScript support is extremely poor among 
//   'feature phones', these features may not work at all on such devices.
//   For better results, consider using a server-based version of this code, 
//   such as Java, APS.NET, PHP, or Ruby.